About a year ago, I decided to ask my friends which financial products they use each year.  Quite a few of my friends are extremely honest about what they do use, but I don’t ask them the specific details about why or how they used them.  The following are some of the common answer I received this year.

Debt was on everyone’s mind.  Whether it was bad credit card debt, too many loans, or other borrowing, it seemed that everyone had some issues with debt.  Some of my friends had taken steps to enter a debt consolidation program to help reduce their payments and get their debt under control.  I also had one friend that needed to go bankrupt – his health had been bad all year, and their medical bills and lower income put them in a position where they couldn’t handle it any more.

Housing values this past year have skyrocketed in our community, and quite a few people took advantage of the increased values in their homes to take out home improvement loans to renovate their houses.  I don’t know how many times I went to some houses this past year, where their flooring or paint on the walls was different each time.  I have noticed a lot of hard wood and laminate flooring in their houses and other renovations as well.  It is neat how you can take advantage of the increase in value in your home, borrow money, do renovations, and increase the value of your home some more.

Lastly, many people mentioned the use of Payday loans.  Perhaps the biggest change that was mentioned was that a fax machine was no longer needed.  These “Payday Loans  No Fax” programs were very popular with my friends that flip houses – they had used these and other hard lenders to come up with down payments on some of their properties.